A young girl headed west to pick up a family deed finds trouble on the way. Good thing she meets up with two men who can help. Which will win her affection?
What happens when a feisty young woman travels west in 1880 to pick up a family deed? If it's small-town Melinda McCorkle, you can count on luck to take a hike. Mindy is travelling with six strange men in a hard-riding stagecoach. When the coach breaks down, they're forced to walk the thirty-five miles remaining to her destination. That would be enough to try anyone's patience, but then the company is set upon by thieves and murderers in the form of the evil Byler brothers, and the stakes are raised.
Fortunately, Mindy makes the close acquaintance of two “gentlemen,” Luke Wilhite and Gary Boone, who try to help her through these dangers.
Luke is tall and fair, while Boone is taller and dark. Mindy feels an immediate attraction to Boone, but he's married! Or is he? Who will finally win Mindy's affection?
Excerpt
Chapter One
The stagecoach bumped along the narrow gulch road. Mindy’s head and shoulder throbbed from the number of times she’d been slammed against the hard wooden door beside her, but she refused to allow herself to lean against the unwashed, tobacco-stained
person next to her. Pinching her lips,
she straightened in the seat, adjusting the green paisley cotton skirt she wore.
Patience and faith will get you through anything, Mindy reminded herself with a measured breath.
Lifting the oiled leather curtain to peer out the window, she jerked swiftly back, covering her mouth in revulsion. “There’s... there’s...” Mindy started, staring at the other passengers in the cramped quarters.
She was unlucky enough to be riding along with four unwashed males. Patience and faith... patience and faith...
“Yeah, we know...” said one of the men lazily. “You don’t particularly want to look out the coach on that side, ma’am. We’re traveling over the Coosa Gully. Nothing but a sheer drop off for about three miles.”
Mindy’s stomach heaved, and she fought to control it. This task wasn’t supposed to be so difficult. All she had to do was pick up a deed to a property. Yes, said property happened to be located three states away from her home in Mississippi. And yes, it was true that she’d never been more than twenty miles away from home before this trip. But it had all sounded so simple!
Yet she’d been poked, prodded, accosted by strange men, lied to, swindled, left by the side of a road only tumbleweeds traveled with any frequency, and had almost been arrested by the crookedest sheriff that ever lived.
If she survived this trip – and that wasn’t a certainty – Mindy vowed she could handle anything else life would throw at her. Certainly though, she soothed herself, the worst was behind her!
That is, if the coach didn’t plunge off this rocky path; if she didn’t die from the fine stink of her fellow passengers; if she could hold her rolling stomach. There were only thirty-five more miles between her and The Blue Saloon, where the deed awaited; she could hold out that long or die trying. And in that case, Mindy decided, pinching her small lips together tightly, she planned to have her dead body delivered to the saloon, just for spite.
She almost smiled, but then caught one of the men across from her begin to grin back. Shooting him a mean look, she turned away.
*
Mindy had been asleep for some while when the commotion started. The coach was rocking and bouncing like a wild buck.
She jumped in her seat, screaming, thrashing her arms for something to hold on to – oddly enough, the other passengers didn’t seem as repugnant now. “Oh, mercy!” Mindy cried. “We’ve done it! We’re goin’ over! Do something! Do something!”
One hand locked onto the shirt of the man to her left, and she pulled him around to face her. “I’m not gonna die this way, you hear? I ain’t ever climbed a tree! I ain’t been married! I ain’t been kissed!”
Mindy’s short life flashed before her eyes, just as she’d always heard happened in moments like these: splashing in the creek as a child, going to church services with her family, disobeying her parents, picking on her little brothers, playing mean tricks on her sisters.
Suddenly, she was full of remorse and in the middle of a heartfelt prayer when she heard the man across from her clear his throat a second time.
“Ur, ma’am? Like I say, we’ve lost a wheel, is all. I reckon you can save them prayers.”
Mindy paused, hands uplifted. She opened one eye. Now that she focused a bit, it was clear that the stagecoach was easing to a controlled stop.
Perhaps the driver could be convinced to allow her to stay behind when the coach was repaired. She had managed on her own before, she could do it again.
As the hot, red flames of embarrassment climbed her body, Mindy tried to think back over what she had done, had said, but she couldn’t remember. Suffice it to say, the yellow in her had come out waving banners.
“If a single one of you says a word,” Mindy said, staring at each man in turn, “I’ll scratch your eyes out.” She hoped she sounded fierce enough.
***
Professional Reviews
Kate Welsh, author of A Texan’s Honor
”When Robyn Corum sits down at her computer, she creates magic. This sweet tale will have you rooting for her hero and heroine and against anyone who stands in their way.”
Cathy MacRae, The Highlander’s Accidental Bride, coming spring 2013
”If you’re looking for a fun, romantic romp through the Wild West, Melinda Heads West will give you what you’re looking for. The interactions between the characters are fun and believable, (and) the bad guys are convincingly brutal.”
Midwest Book Review, Diane Donovan, ebook Reviewer
'Melinda is traveling west with six strangers in a stagecoach in 1880, set upon obtaining her family's deed, when the coach breaks down and the group is forced to walk the remaining thirty-five miles. But their trial doesn't end there; when thieves and murderers encounter them, trouble brews that would have proved fatal were it not for the helpful attraction of two young men who come to her rescue.
Mindy's adventures are only beginning - and a saga is created that will attract fans of Westerns, romances, women's adventures, and compelling writing that captures images so deftly that readers can readily imagine themselves to be part of the story: "Mindy's mind wandered. Her thoughts were of home: soft, leafy grass, tall, cool oak trees, and glistening glasses of hand-squeezed lemonade with tiny ice chips. She would have gladly given all the money in her pouch for one sip of that sweet, refreshing liquid."
As Mindy finds her romance evolving, she struggles with too many choices and options that promise her very different futures than the one she's envisioned or the present she's become used to: "She was still reeling from the idea that a man--any man--would seek out her company. It had been years since she'd had attention from the opposite sex and she loved every minute of it."
From small town residents and encounters to the very different worlds of men and women in pioneer times, MELINDA HEADS WEST is packed with drama, strong characterization, and the efforts of a feisty young woman to uncover a place for herself in the world.
Her evolving romance and her search for a true place to call home will involve women from start to finish in this fine story of frontier days, highly recommended for any fan of romantic Westerns.'
Compelling historical fiction that traces the life of a young English immigrant woman who travels to America at the turn of the century to start a new life for herself. Encountering danger, romance, heartache and tragedy, she strives to fit into a
Ireland 1947. Seven weeks of relentless snow. Guard Eamon Foley is searching for a missing child.
At Toby Appleyard’s farm, he discovers the kitchen littered with dead cats. And the skeletal remains of a woman. Upstairs, Toby is dead in his bed.
